ePortfolio Reflective Introduction

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                Hi there! Welcome to my reflection of the experience of Writing 39C. I will talk about how my research habits, uses of multimodal evidence, peer reviews, and all the assignments I have done in the course has made me a better writer. 

Conducting Research

                Conducting research throughout the drafting process gave me insight into the development of the problem and details regarding the severity of the overall situation. My first research strategy is to gather many related sources and compare and contrast them. Below is an image of my bookmarks for the Context Project. Since different sources have different focuses, reading over them gave me a rather complete picture of the story. For example, one source from Wired may talk about how Google, one of the tech giants, is using consumer data to make marketing decisions, while another article from the Associated Press may explain how exactly is Google achieving this goal. Synthesizing these sources also allows me to form a complete logical chain on how and why the problem of location tracking persists. Another research strategy I formulated is constantly asking myself questions. I realize that to make my paper understandable and engaging, I must place myself in the perspective of the audience. I can't leave my readers in confusion with the wall of text. Therefore, I regularly ask myself whether I would be able to enjoy and understand my paper as someone with no related experiences. This mindset also helped me to better explain my pieces of evidence and connect them to the claim. Asking myself questions also benefits from a research perspective because whenever I can't answer my questions, I can go into research with a question in mind. I have also learned to look for more than one type of source, which may include scholarly journals, news articles, and NGOs. It is interesting to piece the evidence together when they are from different sources. Researching from more sources not only better illustrates the problem but also avoids biases since I am considering all the information together. These strategies definitely enhanced my paper.

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Multimodal Evidence

                Focusing on the multimodality of evidence has made my essays stronger. One of the pieces of evidence I use the most is charts. Whether a number chart or a box plot can be the most illustrative way to present data. An example of this is Appendix A and C in my context project. Appendix A displays what type of location data is being collected and the degree of details it contains. Appendix C shows how much Google has earned from advertisements each year. Both the graph serves to present statistics in a comparative way because it directly highlights the differences between each statistic. Appendix A's chart illustrates how location data is more than just coordinates. It can include user id and the number of visits and even altitude information. These data can be used to identify an individual's daily routine and harm their personal safety. I used this evidence to support my claim that location data contains very sensitive information and thus should be better protected. Appendix B's data on Google's growing revenue from advertisement place emphasis on how profit can be gained with location data and advertisement and how profit will continue to drive companies forward in its current practices. This evidence correlates with my claim that data itself does not generate any value, but data and clear-targeted advertisement can be profitable. Appendix B is relatively different because it is a 3D image that shows different methods of location tracking. This evidence has the advantage of allowing the audience to better comprehend the technological aspect of the problem. Compare to words, an image is much more effective at showing, especially when dealing with unfamiliar concepts. This image helped to clarify my thesis on explaining the intuition behind location tracking through several technologies. Another evidence that I regularly use is quotations from industry-leading figures. These sentences are credible and have a certain authority because of the status of the speaker. 

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Improving from Feedbacks

                I have greatly benefited from the response I have got from my teacher and my peers. I respond to criticism with appreciation and questions about how to improve. In my Context Project, both my peer and Brian mentioned the lack of scholarly sources, which was something that I completely neglected. To address this problem, I used Google Scholar and successfully targeted several scholarly articles and included them as evidence in my paper. Fortunately, the scholarly articles that I found all include numerous charts and detailed explanations which not only gave me a better understanding of location privacy concerns but also allowed me to make my draft more comprehensive. Another comment that I receive asks me to increase the historical context of my topic. Researching the historical development of location data sharing, I was surprised to find information that can be connected to my other paragraphs. For example, my introduction to the technology behind location tracking includes information on GPS, cell signals, and other technologies. In the historical context of my paper, there are also histories regarding how each technology was developed, eventually incorporated into phones, and how this information was used and shared. As for my own critic style, I tend to compare works with the prompt and rubric of the assignment. Using this information, I can evaluate papers based on a more stable standard. I also compare my own paper with others' papers to see whether I can learn from their strengths or avoid any weaknesses.

This is a picture of the feedback I got from one of my peers. The numbers of advice I receive even went beyond the number required, and this was really helpful as it spotted some areas that I did not realize.

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Overall Growth

                At the beginning of my writing courses at UCI, I was really hesitant to start any writing. However, I soon realized that all the assignments and practices were helpful in developing my writing skills. Research-wise, the program at UCI library drastically changed my research habits. I used to only use Google as the only tool for research. Now that I have more tools at hand, I can easily balance the amount of public media and scholarly sources which I often neglected in past research papers. In terms of writing a research paper, my skills in developing warrants have greatly improved. For a long time, I felt my warrant is simply repeating what was already stated in the evidence, and I was often confused as to what I am trying to say. Through an office hour with Brian, I learned that I am the connection between a piece of evidence and my audience. He mentioned that a statistic itself is not important to illustrate a point because the audience doesn't know if the numbers are considered as big or small in context. I have the opportunity to present to my audience why is this piece of evidence significant to my topic. The image shows a before and after of one of my topic sentences, where I changed narration to the actual argument. This was also improved after reading Brian's feedback, which was crucial to my argument building.  AThe organization was something I already found comfortable, but I still found something that I can learn from my peers. Namely, the organization of paragraphs. One of my peers in my conference group used a completely different way to organize her essay, which I found to be interesting and eye-opening. Looking back at myself in week 1, or even at the start of my college writing experience, I realized that as long as time and effort are put in, one does not need to worry about how much growth can be achieved. I don't know how much exactly I have grown in terms of composing, but I can say that I feel much better at writing another paper.

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Conclusion

                I have learned many valuable lessons in this course, and even tackled the problem regarding analysis that I talked about in the self-assessment. Through hours of finding sources and struggling to concentrate, I marched forward step by step. With the experience and knowledge gained from this quarter, I can enter the upper-division writing course with more confidence.

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